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Approximately 90% of problem and pathological gamblers remain untreated. This treatment gap may be diminished by the implementation of low-threshold treatment programs. As cognitive distortions play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of gambling problems, interventions targeting gambling-related biases may be particularly effective. The aim of the present study was to examine the feasibility, acceptance, and safety of a novel metacognitive training for individuals with gambling problems (Gambling-MCT). Twenty-five participants were included in an uncontrolled pilot trial with two assessment points (intervention). The intervention comprised eight training modules targeting gambling-specific cognitive distortions. At baseline and post assessment, symptom severity, as measured with the PG-YBOCS, and gambling-related cognitive distortions, as measured with the GABS, were assessed. In addition, interim assessments measuring session-specific changes were conducted. Subjective appraisal was examined after each module and also post treatment. On average, participants took part in 4.16 (SD = 2.84) training sessions. Both intent-to-treat and per protocol analyses showed significant improvements on the PG-YBOCS and the GABS (dz = 0.37–1.37). After Bonferroni correction for multiple testing, linear mixed models for the analysis of session-specific changes showed no deterioration in participants’ mental state after any of the modules. Subjective appraisal of Gambling-MCT was good. The present pilot study provides first evidence for the feasibility, acceptance, and safety of Gambling-MCT. Recruitment of participants remains challenging, emphasizing the importance of overcoming patient-related treatment barriers. Future studies need to investigate the efficacy of Gambling-MCT in randomized controlled trials. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10899-020-09975-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Oncology clinical trials are often complex leading to years of research and generation of vast amounts of data. Statistical graphics play an invaluable role in transforming these multifaceted data into crisp and simplified visuals that assist researchers to quickly and accurately study the results, detect data trends and patterns, and suggest hypotheses. In other words, “Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency.” The focus of this chapter is to provide a sampling of useful statistical graphics routinely used in clinical oncology research and their utility in communicating information clearly and more efficiently than solely reviewing tables of numerical output. The graphics presented are commonly used during trial design planning, interim analyses, and final analyses of clinical efficacy data.

The extent to which interim methadone (IM) without counseling reduces HIV risk behavior has not been reported. The AIDS Risk Assessment scale was administered at baseline and 4-month follow-up to 319 adult heroin-dependent participants randomly assigned to IM or waiting list. On an intent-to-treat basis, there was a significantly greater reduction in drug injection and unprotected sex while high from baseline to follow-up, favoring the IM condition. Remedying the shortage of methadone capacity through the expansion of IM would be a worthwhile approach to reducing the spread of HIV infection.

This paper provides an introduction to the panel process within the framework of the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) dispute settlement mechanism. After this brief introduction (I), it discusses (II) the types of complaints (that is, “violation” complaints, “non-violation” complaints and “situation” complaints); (III) who may participate in panel proceedings (including whether private counsel and non-governmental organizations may participate and whether there is a need for a “legal interest” in initiating proceedings); (IV) the object of a complaint; (V) the consultations stage; (VI) panel establishment and terms of reference; (VII) multiple panel proceedings; (VIII) panel composition; (IX) procedural stages of panel proceedings (including organizational meeting, preliminary issues and procedural objections, written submissions and oral hearings, confidentiality of proceedings); (X) third party rights; (XI) burden of proof (including timing of evidence); (XII) panel’s right to seek information (including expert review groups and duty to respond); (XIII) mandate of panels in respect of legal issues and factual issues; (XIV) interim review stage; (XV) contents of the final panel report (including the obligation to set out the basic rationale behind panel findings, duly exercise judicial economy, not to add to or diminish rights and obligations of Members, and the right to suggest how to implement the panel findings); and (XVI) conclusion of panel proceedings.1

With the popularization of networks, digitalization and automation, demand for enterprise informatization becomes more urgent. There are many factors leading to the demand for EIS. Some of the factors are from enterprise development, while others are from policy driven. In this paper, we present a relationship model by using system dynamics method to characterize the cause-result (C-R) of demand drivers of enterprise informatization. Based on the empirical studies, we reveal how the factors affect the demand for enterprise informatization, which form a cluster of causation to be used as the cause variables in our model. This procedure is to settle on the interim variables and result variables, which formed systematic dynamics C-R charts. Questionnaires and interviews from dozens of enterprises, Delphi Expert Decision method are made and analyzed, which verified the relationship between variables. The results presented in this paper provide good insights for the enterprise managers’ optimal decisions.

The Metoprolol CR/XL Randomized Intervention Trial in Chronic Heart Failure (MERIT-HF) was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial in 3,991 patients with New York Heart Class II–IV heart failure and LVEF ≤0.40. The two primary objectives were to determine the effect of metoprolol CR/XL on all-cause mortality and on the combined endpoint of all-cause mortality or all-cause hospitalizations (time to first event). There was a two-week placebo run-in period. after which patients were randomized to either metoprolol CR/XL at a dose of 12.5 mg (NYHA III–IV) or 25mg (NYHA II) once daily or matching placebo. The randomized treatment was titrated up to 200 mg once daily or to the highest tolerated dose over an eight-week titration phase. The trial was designed to follow patients for a total mean follow-up of 2.4 years. The Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) had two tasks. The first was to review all reported Serious Adverse Events (SAEs) on a monthly basis and produce a short report to the sponsor aimed for regulatory agencies. This was done because the sponsor had received a waiver for expedited reporting of SAEs from regulatory agencies including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The second was to perform three pre-specified interim analyses of total mortality. After the second interim analysis, at the point of observing one-half of the targeted number of deaths, the trial was stopped early by the International Steering Committee on recommendation of the DSMB (mean follow-up time 1 year). Final results showed that all-cause mortality was lower in the metoprolol CR/XL group compared to the placebo group (145 deaths, corresponding to 7.2% per patient-year of follow-up for the metoprolol CR/XL group versus 217 deaths, 11.0% per patient-year of follow-up for the placebo group, p = 0.0062 adjusted for interim analyses, p = 0.00009 nominal). The second primary endpoint of all-cause mortality combined with all-cause hospitalizations was also lower for the metoprolol CR/XL group (641 events) compared to placebo (767 events), p = 0.00012 nominal. The procedures developed by the DSMB to implement the required intense safety follow-up will be described.

The Project was affected throughout by political and economic barriers, but some adoption of technological enhancements occurred nonetheless. The Project set up interim websites for the partner institutions and faculty (some of which are ongoing), created a mailing list for participants, offered workshops in Oregon and Tunisia for faculty and administrators, and continues to provide online consultation and support. The teaching of English for Specific Purposes in Tunisia has been enhanced where Internet and computer resources are available. Rapid growth in Internet availability to faculty and students bodes well for future use. It was clear from this experience that teachers, even in countries without extensive resources, can take advantage of low-cost or free Internet material available for online or offline use. A theme often repeated throughout the Project, too, was that teachers were preparing not only for the present, but also for the future. As computer and Internet access continue to expand in educational institutions, English language teachers need to be prepared to seize opportunities as they arise and to create, sustain, and extend change. The Project benefited both the American and the Tunisian partners by offering an opportunity to share ideas in a new environment and thus gain a broader understanding of the uses and limitations of technology in education. Our teaching will be better for it.

The Heart and Estrogen-progestin Replacement Study (HERS) was the first major randomized blinded trial to test the widespread belief that hormone therapy would prevent fatal and non-fatal coronary heart disease (CHD). The main findings—CHD events were not prevented and thromboembolic events were increased—illustrates in a powerful way the evidence-based medicine principle that well-designed and executed randomized blinded trials are a necessary basis for drug treatments. The HERS Data and Safety Monitoring Board played an important role in a number of difficult decisions that led to more definitive conclusions, notably the decisions not to stop the trial early in the face of adverse experience in both primary and secondary disease outcomes. HERS, with its complex and unexpected findings, illustrates the value of designing flexible interim monitoring guidelines that allow for decisions based on the judgment of a diverse group of experts as to benefits and harms, ethical implications for participants, and the social obligation to have an optimal impact on policy and practice guidelines.

The Stroke Prevention in Atrial Fibrillation (SPAF) I trial evaluated aspirin and warfarin for prevention of stroke and nonCNS emboli in elderly patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation. Participants were categorized as either warfarin-eligible or warfarin-ineligible based on contraindications to or refusal of anticoagulation, and interim efficacy monitoring examined treatment effects separately by warfarin eligibility. The planned primary analyses compared aspirin to placebo among all participants and warfarin to placebo among warfarin-eligible patients. The study was terminated early following the second interim analysis due to a large reduction in thromboembolic events by aspirin versus placebo among the subgroup of warfarin-eligible participants (1 vs. 18, respectively, relative risk reduction = 94%, p < 0.001). This reduction was not evident among warfarin-ineligible patients (25 vs. 28, respectively, relative risk reduction = 8%, p = 0.8). The reduction by aspirin vs. placebo for all aspirin-assigned patients (the planned primary analysis) was significant (26 vs. 46, respectively, relative risk reduction = 42%, p = 0.02), but this resulted from pooling of subgroups with dissimilar responses. While the extreme effect of aspirin in anticoagulation-eligible participants was suspected to be due to the play of chance, termination of the SPAF I trial was justified to protect the interests of warfarin-eligible participants assigned placebo. The potential implications of interim efficacy monitoring of multiple subgroups should be carefully considered when planning interim monitoring.

NORDUNET began as an informal cooperation between Nordic “networkers” in 1980. With support from the Nordic Council of Ministers, a NORDUNET project for a common Nordic academic network began in 1985. Mats Brunell (Sweden) and Einar Lovdal (Norway) led the work. Originally based on existing interim services of EARN, DECnet and ISO OSI support, lack of services led to complete reorientation in 1987. With bridges running Ethernet over slow lines, a Nordic-wide Ethernet connecting major nodes in the countries linked national Ethernets to a common node at KTH, Stockholm. The major services of the time, X.25, EARN and RSCS, DECnet, and TCP/IP, were connected in through switches, bridges and routers called “the NORDUNET plug”. The operational network NORDUnet, a first international multi-protocol network, began services in 1988 and officially opened in 1989. Major links to the US NSFnet and European networks connected to the KTH node. The project had a strong impact on Nordic networking competence that influenced the European move to TCP/IP services in opposition to the prevailing adherence (politically supported) to ISO OSI. Over time, TCP/IP won the “protocol war”. The early introduction of TCP/IP gave the Nordic area a head start in internet penetration, still reflected in the countries being in the front of public use of the internet. A major lesson was the success of Nordic cooperation on all levels, through sharing of responsibilities, joint development of competence and creation of enthusiasm. NORDUnet is today owned by the national ministries, run through cooperation by the national networks, and able to supply the Nordic academic internet with exceptionally cost-effective bandwidth to all major international networks such as Startap and Geant.

This paper summarizes the interim findings of the THINKcreative project in terms of the required research agenda for new collaborative, networked organizations. A number of mechanisms including a Delphi survey, several focused workshops, panels, and regional workshops, were used to collect and synthesize the opinions and recommendations from a large number of industry and academic visionaries. The results of these initiatives are presented in terms of a collection of recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of a Bayesian approach in practical problems involving two groups (treatments) which are to be compared. Using practical criteria for comparisons, the advantage of the Bayesian approach will be demonstrated in two situations. Problem I will deal with cholesterol data from two groups of people and it is the aim of the experiment to say which group has the higher cholesterol levels. Problem II will compare two treatments in a clinical trial situation at an interim before the trial is completed. This situation is referred to as interim analysis because only part of the data in the planned trial has been collected. At this interim stage it is desirable to decide whether to stop the experiment now or to continue until the end.

This paper proposes that the next wave of electronic business (e-business) will move from current transaction based e-business to the merging of e-business and knowledge management, and that organizations that have already internally adopted knowledge management (KM) will find the transition to this next wave of e-business a natural and sustainable act. The first part of the paper explores recent trends and forecasts pertaining to e-business and KM, concluding that organizations are moving towards a more networked economy where partnerships, collaboration and knowledge sharing will complement current transactional e-business, and that successful KM requires a balance between technology and organizational change interventions. The second part of the paper explores the issues associated with establishing a knowledgesharing culture in preparation for the next proposed evolution of e-business by presenting interim results of a current study into the adoption of KM practices by staff in a global IT services company. Instantiating various adoption models, the study investigated time of adoption and potential factors that influenced the adoption of 2 KM applications by 283 survey respondents. The findings of this research are interpreted in light of the proposed next wave of e-business, providing additional considerations and actions that organizations may take to successfully participate in the evolution of e-business in a more knowledge sharing based networked economy.

We give a preliminary perspective on the basic principles and pitfalls of adjustable autonomy and human-centered teamwork. We then summarize the interim results of our study on the problem of work practice modeling and human-agent collaboration in space applications, the development of a broad model of human-agent teamwork grounded in practice, and the integration of the Brahms, KAoS, and NOMADS agent frameworks We hope our work will benefit those who plan and participate in work activities in a wide variety of space applications, as well as those who are interested in design and execution tools for teams of robots that can function as effective assistants to humans.

This document, the 5th Report of the Advisor for the Strategic Project is the last of the interim reports on the Advisor’s work for the Project. The 6th Report, due in April 2000, will attempt to refine and update the discussions in the previous reports and to assemble this reworked material into a coherent, book-length final statement.

The pervasive influence of the dynamic of the reciprocal algorithms of behavior can be understood when one realizes the relationship between behavioral tension, costs, production, and exchange. Understanding this can go a long way toward unifying the social sciences

Market economics sets are a useful indeed inescapable, hurdle that new technologies must overcome-technological innovation by itself can’t assure commercial success. HDTV’s future has yet to identify or create a level of consumer demand that justifies the level of investment program producers and delivery systems will have to undertake. Investments currently are defensively-driven, to prevent market-position losses should consumer demand appear. Globally, arguments for HDTV seem even less-developed than in advanced economies. In the interim, government regulation and armtwisting worldwide is acting as a powerful driver, though whether historically HDTV will benefit from such efforts (as computers once did) or lose (as nuclear power has) remains uncertain. The government’s role won’t disappear, despite talk of “deregulation”; academics should spend more time examining producer and delivery-system alliances, their effects on competition, and their ultimate provision of HDTV as an economical surrogate to analog for global consumers

A number of characteristics separate programs engaged in healing and transformation from the “fix it/cure it” types. First and foremost, they contribute to the likelihood of long-term outcomes rather than primarily produce shorter-term outcomes. In doing so, they typically provide a range of services aimed at a range of interim and intermediate outcomes key to longer-term success.

This chapter presents a formulation of the essential lived structure of being-ashamed derived from an empirical-phenomenological analysis of the descriptions of various subjects’ situated experiences of the phenomenon. The research project and its results, from which this chapter is derived, were originally reported in my doctoral dissertation (Vallelonga, 1986). It has been ten years since that dissertation was completed and defended, and at least 12 books have been written on shame in the interim (Albers, 1995; Bradshaw, 1988; Broucek, 1991; Fossum & Mason, 1986; Harper & Hoopes, 1990; Kaufman, 1989; Lewis, 1992; Middleton-Moz, 1990; Nathanson, 1992; Nichols, 1991; Potter-Efron, 1989; Tangney & Fischer, 1995). Given the publication of so many books (not to mention articles) on the topic, the reader may legitimately ask if there is anything left to say about this phenomenon. There is much to say!

In the last Diagnostic Workshop, which took place at the mid-point of the ITER EDA, the ITER machine design and physics performance was presented [1] based on the Interim Design Report (IDR). Whereas the design of several major machine components (e.g. TF-coils) were changed considerably compared to the earlier Outline Design (OD), it was pointed out at the time that the overall objectives and the plasma performance remained in line with the requirements stated by the Special Working Group(SWG 1).

The implementation of test improvements can have a significant impact on product lifecycle costs. However, the time lag in accruing potential benefits can be problematic when attempting to justify the required investment. This can be overcome if a phased implementation is adopted where each interim level of investment delivers less substantial but more immediate gains. This chapter demonstrates that techniques previously used to investigate cost-saving opportunities at strategic and lifecycle level can be used within a system manufacturing process to achieve tangible short-term benefits. The failure profile of a system level test process is characterized and used to drive defect elimination and optimum test times. Various “stopping criteria”, product-process comparisons and improvements are discussed.

Interim controls are measures that can be taken on an interim basis, until full-scale abatement can be done, permitting you to live safely with lead-based paint, temporarily, by preventing it from generating any additional dust and removing the dust that it has generated. The major advantage of interim controls over abatement (removal or permanent coverage of lead paint) is that they can be significantly less expensive and done relatively quickly. The disadvantage is that they require you to monitor the situation on an ongoing basis and possibly do minor repair work over the years in order to remain effective. Some advocates point out that interim controls have never been proven scientifically to be effective in reducing lead exposure, but others agree that it is only common sense that reducing the environmental availability of lead dust will reduce the amount of lead a child ingests.

Lack of data makes independent checks of the results in chapter 2 difficult. For the post-World War II period some data are available from the Industry Wage Surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately the industry coverage is somewhat limited, and constructing time series from the surveys is not easy. In 1970 Charles O’Connor of the BLS called attention to the increasing proportions of workers on late shifts as revealed in the Industry Wage Surveys.1 Using all the data available through 1980, I was able to compare for twenty-six individual industries the proportion of all production workers employed on late shifts in an early postwar year with the corresponding proportion in the 1970s. Excluding continuous industries, the early period (approximately 1946) yielded an unweighted average of 19.9 percent, whereas the later period (approximately 1974) yielded an average of 27.5 percent. The average annual rate of change compounded over the twenty-eight years was 1.16 percent. This annual rate may be compared to an annual change of 0.97 percent on the basis of the metropolitan area data described in chapter 2 (table 15). These particular figures are unweighted and refer to proportions of production workers on late shifts (see table 19).

These very preliminary notes have been brought on by the imminence of a trip to the USA by J.C. Martin: they should not be treated as a considered report even of the rather low standard to which our usual notes aspire.

This paper deals with the need for and the applicability of multicriteria-based decision making techniques in computer integrated enterprise/manufacturing environments. Interim literature survey results are also presented.

Under the ICE Conditions of Contract interim payments, based on the quantity of work done during the previous month, must be made by the employer to the contractor at monthly intervals. The amount of work done is measured by the engineer under the contract, and valued in accordance with the terms of the contract. The engineer then issues a certificate of payment showing the amount that the employer must pay to the contractor. Occasionally other intervals for payment may be agreed to suit accounting periods: for example, payments at four-weekly intervals. Sometimes it is agreed that two out of every three monthly payments are approximate valuations of work done; thus only the quarterly payments are based on a detailed measurement of work done.

1. The Alpha Spending Function Approach to Interim Data Analyses D.L. DeMets, G. Lan. 2. Issues in the Design and Analysis of AIDS Clinical Trials D.O. Dixon, J.M. Albert. 3. Recent Developments in the Design of Phase II Clinical Trials P.F. Thall, R.M. Simon. 4. Multivariate Failure Time Data D.Y. Lin. 5. Goodness-of-Fit and Diagnostics for Proportional Hazards Regression Models P.M. Grambsch. 6. A Review of Tree-Based Prognostic Models M. LeBlanc, J. Crowley. 7. Decision Analysis and Bayesian Methods in Clinical Trials D.A. Berry. 8. A Bayesian Model for Evaluating Specificity of Treatment Effects in Clinical Trials R.M. Simon, D.O. Dixon, B. Freidlin. 9. The Exact Analysis of Contingency Tables in Medical Research C.R. Mehta. 10. Stratified-Adjusted vs. Unstratified Assessment of Sample Size and Power for Analyses of Proportions J.M. Lachin, O.M. Bautista. 11. Quality of Life Assessment in Clinical Trials R.D. Gelber, S. Gelber. Index.

Over the past three decades, clinical trials have become one of the major standards for evaluating new therapies and interventions in medicine [1–3]. Numerous clinical trials have been conducted during this period across a wide variety of diseases, evaluating drugs, procedures, devices, and biologic materials. The fundamentals of the design, conduct, and analyses of clinical trials have been developed and refined during this period as well. One such fundamental is that clinical data should be carefully monitored during the course of the trial so that unexpected or unacceptable toxicity can be detected as soon as possible in order to minimize patient exposure; in addition, trials should not be continued longer than necessary to prove the benefits of the therapy or intervention under study, or to understand the trade-offs between the benefits and risks of the therapy. In order to accomplish this goal, the National Institutes of Health sponsored a committee in the 1960s to develop guidelines for the conduct of clinical trials. The chair of this committee was Dr. Bernard Greenberg from the University of North Carolina, and the report, which was issued in 1967, has become known as the Greenberg Report [4], although it was only recently published in the literature. This report endorses the concept of interim review of data by an independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), a committee that has no conflict of interest for the study. This typically means that committee members should not be investigators entering patients into the trial. The Coronary Drug Project (CDP) [5] was one of the first trials to implement the Greenberg model.

The comparison of an interim computer model of the tertiary structure of the B-chain of bovine α-thrombin predicted by homology with α-chymotrypsin1 and the refined 1.9 A structure of human alpha-thrombin2,3 is reported here. The refinement of the surface loops is incomplete, as (in the interest of demonstrating objectivity) modelling was stopped when completion of the X-ray crystallographic structure2 was announced. Modelling of the loops is now in progress.

Hyperreactivity of the cardiovascular system has been implicated as a risk factor for the future development of hypertension and coronary heart disease. At the present time, this assertion has the status of a plausible hypothesis; confirmation, or otherwise, rests with the outcome of longitudinal studies, such as those discussed in Chapter 15. Since it will be several years before data from some of these studies are available, where should attention be directed in the interim? One strategy is to focus on the relationship between responses seen in the laboratory and those evidenced in real-life situations.

Financial control has a variety of meanings when related to central government. To some, like Mrs Thatcher, at least initially during her time as Prime Minister, it seemed to mean making a considerable effort to reduce public expenditure as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product. Indeed, mainly through a combination of privatizations, sale of assets (e.g. council houses), reductions in contributions to nationalized industries and lower interest payments through reduction of the National Debt, her successive administrations have reduced public spending (before deducting receipts from privatizations) from about 43% of GDP in 1979 to about 39% in 1990 with every prospect of the percentage remaining at about that level for a while. Moreover, the said percentage never fell below the one inherited (43%) until late 1986 and went as high as 47% in the interim. One may debate the extent to which the prime objective was achieved and whether it was likely to have been achieved without a much more rigorous consideration of spending options, but constraining or reducing public expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, has been an often declared interpretation of financial control during the last eleven years. A widespread interpretation which, it will be shown later in this paper, also created problems in achieving success with alternative interpretations of the term.

A Committee on Photobiology in Developing Countries was set up at the interim meeting of the AIP held in Grenoble in 1986 at the occasion of the founding meeting of the European Society for Photobiology. Members of the committee are K.K. RohatgiMukherjee, Chairperson, S. Braslaysky and E. Riklis. It was assigned the task of identifying photobiology-related problems of importance to developing countries, and to suggest how the AIP may be of assistance in promoting activities in these countries. Members of the committee had knowledge of problems in the Latin America continent, S. Braslaysky being from Argentina and E. Riklis from having been Scientific Counsellor to Latin America while serving in Brazil, and K.K. Rohatgi-Mukherjee having knowledge of India and the Far East countries. Accordingly, a draft of proposed activities was sent to several organisations and scientists and contacts were maintained with the Academia Sinica in Shanghai, the Third World Academy of Sciences and other noted scientists, but no representative from these organisations arrived at the International Photobiology congress, which perhaps is an indication of one of the problems facing scientists in the developing countries.

This chapter will introduce the issues, method and interim findings of the first stage of fieldwork from an ongoing study designed to explore the views of nurses and patients on how the nursing provided is believed to affect the welfare of patients in hospital.

The ORR1 is the annual yield from a project over the study period, taking into account reinvestment of interim receipts. Project earnings and earnings from reinvestment are accumulated to the end of the study period and set equal to the present value of cost to compute the ORR.

While preparing for this meeting, I felt like Rip van Winkle awakening from a 20-year sleep to discover how much has happened and has been learned in the interim.

The Industry Degraded Core Rulemaking (IDCOR) Program has established a technical foundation for resolving the severe accident issues associated with the operation of light water reactor (LWR) nuclear power plants. The technical program began in early 1981 and was completed by 1984. IDCOR cam to three primary technical conclusions and one major policy conclusion. First, the probabilities of severe nuclear accidents occurring are extremely low. Second, the fission product source terms--quantities and types of radioactive material released in the event of severe accidents--are likely to be much less than had been calculated in previous studies. Third, the risks and consequence’s to the public of severe nuclear accidents are significantly below those predicted by previous studies and are much smaller than the risk levels incorporated in the NRC interim safety goals. From a policy standpoint, IDCOR concluded that major design or operational changes in reactors are not warranted. To maintain an industry presence with the NRC to close open technical issues and assure appropriate industry input into the NRC decision processes. To deomonstrate generic applicability of IDCOR results and support the development of an integrated approach for individual plant examinations. To use IDCOR results and other information to improve the source terms used in regulatory nuclear plants and to improve emergency planning.

Insight into cancer, one of the principal scourges of modern man, has increased slowly but steadily over the years. Epidemiologists concur that most human malignancies are caused, at least in part, by environmental determinants over which an individual can exercise some control; in principle then, the disease is preventable to some extent (10). In practice, however, the goal of cancer prevention by large-scale efforts to minimize exposure to the causal agents would seem to be unattainable, as judged by societal experience with two major ‘life-style‚ factors, habitual tobacco usage and sunbathing. Although an ultimate aim is to develop other more socially acceptable prevention strategies, there exists in the interim a requirement for improved diagnostic techniques and more rational treatment protocols. Each of these approaches to cancer control will almost certainly necessitate clearer understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the etiology and pathogenesis of the disease.

A manpower planning framework is developed for organizations in which staffing targets are ambiguous due to the absence of a well-specified production function. A variation of goal-programming is introduced to guide the selection of hiring and promotion rates, which are control parameters in a familiar Markov transition model. Unlike applications that treat well-defined but mutually inconsistent grade size targets, the goal-focusing model addresses the problem of numerous feasible solutions. Attention is focused on a subset of policy combinations with desirable properties, such as stability of promotion rates, which are evaluated with respect to implied interim and long-range staffing levels. The model is illustrated by simulation of five-year planning scenarios for a university faculty.

Insight into cancer, one of the principal scourges of modern man, has increased slowly but steadily over the years. Epidemiologists concur that most human malignancies are caused, at least in part, by environmental determinants over which an individual can exercise some control; in principle then, the disease is preventable to some extent (Doll and Peto, 1981). In practice, however, the goal of cancer prevention by large-scale efforts to minimize exposure to the causal agents would seem to be unattainable, as judged by societal experience with two major ‘life-style’ factors, habitual tobacco usage and sunbathing. Although an ultimate aim is to develop other more socially acceptable prevention strategies, there exists in the interim a requirement for improved diagnostic techniques and more rational treatment protocols. Each of these approaches to cancer control will almost certainly necessitate clearer understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the etiology and pathogenesis of the disease.

The clients who completed the rehabilitation program were followed up from 6 months to 1 year after their final assessment with the Halstead-Reitan Battery. A few of them were lost to the follow-up procedures, and so we were able to secure information on only 16 program participants and 6 of the subjects who did not receive any formal rehabilitation during the 6-month interim period between the two testing sessions. The general purpose of the follow-up was to determine if there was any differential improvement in the adjustment level of the subjects who did and did not go through the program. As indicated in Chapter 6, program subjects showed significantly more improvement in their test scores than the control subjects. The follow-up represented an attempt to learn if the superior test performance was correlated with superior adjustment to the environment. However, any findings derived from these studies must be taken cautiously in view of the very limited number of control subjects.

Therapeutic trials are always expensive in terms of time of highly trained medical/scientific personnel and often in terms of money for extra staff and supporting service. They are also tedious to perform even where positive results may be expected. Therefore, it is important that they should be neither larger nor more prolonged than is necessary to obtain a definite result. This is easy to say but hard to do.

The coastal commissions were provided statutorially guaranteed autonomy and had sweeping formal powers over all development in the 1000-yard interim permit area. Nevertheless, there was a wide range of external forces that would affect their decisions. We now turn to a brief sketch of these forces, beginning with the pressures created by the changing needs and resources of the state’s population, public opinion, and media attention. Then examined are the roles played by organized interest groups, the commissions’ legal superiors (i.e., the legislature, governor, courts and U.S. Office of Coastal Zone Management), and peer agencies in the state government and their local counterparts.

The problem is to compare the political party preferences of the ten European countries of the E.E.C. as expressed in three election periods. Two of the points of time are the European elections of 1979 and 1984. The third period is intermediate to these for each country, most of the interim elections being held between 1981 and 1983. (The data are given by Janssen et al.).

Electric utilities have for many years accumulated funds in order to pay for the future decommissioning of equipment and/or facilities. The uniqueness of nuclear plant decommissioning is therefore not in the basic concept, but in the unique combination of time duration, the associated uncertainties, and the cost magnitudes associated with nuclear plants. There are two basic elements which govern the decommissioning revenues to be received from the ratepayers who will benefit from use of the facility’s energy output: 1) the actual method and cost of decommissioning and 2) the manner in which the anticipated costs will be collected during the facility’s useful life and used on an interim basis prior to being paid out during decommissioning. The first element will normally involve a reactor-specific engineering cost estimate for decommissioning, based on current costs and regulations, and is a necessary input for the second of these two basic elements. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to describe the various factors related to the second element including rate-regulatory factors, income taxes, and accounting practices; to analyze alternative interim use of accumulated funds; to examine alternative approaches for cost recovery, and to examine one particular alternative that appears to have unique features. Also, parallels are drawn between decommissioning cost recovery and spent fuel disposal cost recovery.

It is becoming commonplace for the United States Supreme Court to cite social science research when it decides cases of relevance to the criminal justice (Ballew v. Georgia)1 or mental health systems (Addington v. Texas).2 Against this background, the first thing to strike a social scientist in the Vitek 3 prison-to-mental hospital transfer case is that the Court cited not a single piece of psychological or sociological data. This lack of attention to research on “social facts” (Saks, 1980) regarding prisoners who are transferred to mental hospitals bespeaks no general retreat by the Court from the incorporation of social science in judicial decisions. Rather, the more probable explanation is that the justices and their clerks simply could find no relevant empirical data on which to rely. Indeed, in our extensive search for material for this chapter, we have found very few studies directed explicitly at the topic of prison-to-mental hospital transfer. We shall, therefore, consider in some detail the results of our own recent national survey (see Introduction), as well as an in depth interim study of transfer procedures in six states.

When jurisprudence became a science of relations in law in its own right in the nineteenth century, the historical link between philosophy and law was severed.1 It is now nearly thirty-five years since Cairns appraised this rift between philosophy and law. In the interim new links have been forged. The most conspicuous philosophical-legal tie is, perhaps, in the area of rights. A less visible relation between law and philosophy can be seen through Peirce’s pragmatic thoughts. The name for this fresh approach to the study of law and other social systems is semiotics. A special area of this new field of inquiry is legal semiotics with its ramified inquiry into economics and politics.

In this paper we shall give an interim report of some of the findings of the Sociological Research Unit which have a bearing on the major topic for this session. We shall first give a general outline of the research undertaken and then discuss briefly the sample, the methods used, the procedures for analysing the data and finally some interim findings. There is, unfortunately, no time to discuss the theoretical perspective which is influencing the research.

Advances in immunology are taking place with an increasing tempo and on a broadening front. Progress has been particularly marked in the field of cellular immunology, where much effort is being directed toward identifying the origins of cells which take part in immune responses. The different contributions made by immunologists, developmental biologists, geneticists, biochemists, and pathologists are disclosing a situation of considerable complexity, and the occasional reviewer cannot hope to produce more than an interim account. In the present review, we shall concentrate mainly on current theories that deal with the origin, structure, and functional organization of the mammalian system of lymphocytes. Although the emphasis will be on the experimental animal rather than man, we are very conscious of the need to establish the wider relevance of results obtained from such experimental systems. We believe that these results are not (in W. H. Auden’s phrase) “abstract models of events, derived from dead experiments,” and we shall consider some of their clinical implications in the last section of this review.

The principles on which the ethological approach to animal behaviour is based were worked out mainly from studies on vertebrates other than mammals. More recently, the same approach has been fruitfully adopted in the study of mammalian behaviour, particularly by German zoologists and a very considerable body of factual information has already been amassed. Although new information is still coming in at an ever increasing rate, it seems worth while to attempt some interim synthesis of what is already known; from this to see whether the principles deduced from studies on other groups require any modification, amplification or restriction when applied to mammals; and finally to try to clarify what are the particular features that characterise mammalian behaviour.